The Fail is Strong with This One
by The Nerdinator
Summary: New Heroes, S1E2. An embarrassing video becomes a viral hit at the cost of Abby's self-confidence. While Paige, Naomi, and Chester try to get Abby back to her old self, Ty and Jetpack set out to find the person who made the video - but none of them know that an old foe is plotting to destroy Grossology forever!
1. Cold Open

"Dude, did you get the link?" one teenage boy asked the other.

"I sure did. Let's watch this puppy," his friend replied. He clicked a line of blue text in his email, which opened a new tab that took him directly to YouTube. The video was entitled, "Girl dancing FAIL", and the boys looked on, eager for it to load.

The video opened to a teenage girl standing in front of a mirror. She had deep red hair that went to her waist and was tied into a ponytail. She wore a purple sweater, black leggings, and red ballet flats (though you couldn't tell that last bit from the video). Her reflection revealed her face, especially her icy blue eyes.

After making sure no one else was around, the girl pulled out her phone and put on a song. After a few seconds of music, she began to dance to it...only to end up falling flat on her back.

"Dangit."

The video ended.

The two boys watching it burst into laughter, not knowing (or caring) about the fact that the girl had self-esteem issues...

(Cue theme song).


	2. Chester gets beaned with an apple

**AN: This fic is set on September 2, 2014**

* * *

"So, Jetpack, how do you like school so far?" Chester asked. It was lunchtime now - the first lunch of junior year. He, Ty, and Jetpack were sitting together (Andy was busy somewhere else).

"It's fine, I guess," the robot replied, his proboscis submerged in a water bottle. "But what's homework?"

"Work that the teachers have you do at home," Ty said through a sandwich.

"Oh. Heh, silly me, I should have figured that out." He slurped some of his water.

 _Thwack!_

An apple hit Chester in the back of the head. He turned around and saw Kent and his cronies, sniggering to each other about how funny it was. Chester, angered, started to get up.

"Whoa. Easy there, tiger," Ty said, super-extending an arm out to keep Chester sitting.

"They hit me with an apple. Do I not have a right to be angry?"

"Just let nature take its course. The cafeteria people will find out eventually, and they'll do their job."

A slice of pizza hit Ty in the face, cheese-side out.

"Besides," Ty added from underneath the pizza, "you get free food." His tongue extended out from underneath the slice, pulled it off his face and into his mouth.

"Easy for you to say," Chester grumbled. "You'll eat anything. Literally."

Just then, Paige and Naomi sat down next to him.

"Okay guys, team meeting," Paige said.

"We can't have a team meeting now!" Chester exclaimed. "People will get suspicious."

"Heads up!" Ty said. The five ducked, narrowly avoiding a flying piece of cake that splattered against the wall. One of the cafeteria aides noticed, saw who had thrown it, and started walking towards where the bullies were sitting. The bullies, panicking, got up and ran. All eyes were on them...and not Team Grossology.

"That was convenient," Jetpack said.

"They wasted a perfectly good piece of cake," Ty noted. "Wait - isn't Abby normally the one who calls the team meetings?"

"Well...this is actually about her," Naomi said. "She hasn't been herself. She's been sulking - and I admit, normally that wouldn't be a problem, but I can sense that she's really unhappy this time."

"It's that viral video," Ty said. "Abby's become a laughingstock."

"What viral video?"

"The one where Abby tries to dance, but falls over?"

"Oh. Ohhhhhh. No wonder."

"Which brings us to an important question," Jetpack said. "Why do people find it funny when others get hurt?"

"I'm not sure," Chester said. "The internet is just a cruel, cruel place."

"And that leads us to here," Paige said. "I admit, Abby and I aren't exactly the closest of people, and I admit it was mostly my doing. But I'm still her friend, and I'm concerned about her."

"So what's the plan?" Ty asked.

"Chester, Naomi, and I will try to get her to feel better. You and Jetpack will go find out who took the video, and why. Unless it was either of you two, in which case-"

"Nope, not us. Had to go on errands. I can get my dad as a witness."

"Okay, good."

"Operation: Console the Cynic is officially underway," Ty said.

The groups went their separate ways.

As soon as no one was looking, Ty scooped a bit of the cake off the wall and ate it.

"What?" he said to the reader. "I'm hungry."


	3. Working dat Photoshop

It had taken them a little while, but they had finally found Abby in one of the hallways, sulking on the floor alone.

"...Abby?" Paige asked. "You okay?"

"Do I LOOK okay to you?" Abby snapped. She looked away.

"Abby, we're concerned. This isn't you," Naomi said gently.

"Oh, it's me all right. I haven't told you everything."

Naomi turned to the others. "I'm not getting through to her."

"Then it's time for plan B," Paige said. "Chester?"

"Yeah?"

Paige shoved him onto the floor next to Abby. "You try."

"Uh..."

Abby turned to face him.

"Erm...well...we heard about the video..."

"But of course. I'm a laughingstock because of it."

"Forgive me for being intrusive here, but...why are you so cynical?"

"Because everybody hates me." Paige and Naomi recoiled in shock when they heard this. They hadn't expected her to say something like that. "I'm just returning the favor."

"Uh...for the record, Abby," Chester said, trying to figure out the right thing to say, "...I don't hate you."

Abby was genuinely surprised by this. The surprise turned into sadness, and she couldn't help but give Chester a hug.

"That's the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me," Abby said, crying a little.

"Wow," Chester said, partly because his crush was actually touching him, but also because of shock. "I didn't know you suffered from depression. But," he continued, pulling Abby off of him so he could look her in the eye, "you're stronger than you think you are. You're a very tough girl, Abby. You'll be okay."

The bell rang.

"First, however, we need to go to class."

"Good thing we all have Kirkpatrick for history this set," Paige said. "You know, I can't help but wonder what Ty and Jetpack are doing..."

* * *

"Man, it is so convenient we're both signed up for film/photo this set," Ty whispered to Jetpack. Currently, they were in class.

"Sure is," Jetpack whispered back. Silence. "Why is it convenient?"

"Because we can look at the video without catching attention. This is a course in _film_ , after all."

Ty first muted the volume of his laptop. Finding the video, he clicked on it, and begrudgingly watched it.

"I don't see you," Jetpack said. "You were right; you didn't take it."

" _I_ don't see me. What does that have to do with it?"

"Um...I don't know much, but I think I can see you when you're invisible to everyone else."

"Of course," Ty muttered. "Like a real butterfly, you can see ultraviolet light, which humans cannot." He exited the video and got to work on writing down the supply list.

A short while later, something flashed in Jetpack's eyes. "Ty."

"Hm?"

"We gotta do the thing. Just got an email."

Ty raised his hand.

"Yes, Mr. Archer?" the teacher asked.

"Jetpack just got an email about something great to film just now."

"Hm. It's a bit early in the course, but a great opportunity to capture art should never be missed."

"Thank you, Dr. Fisher."

Ty and Jetpack left the classroom.

* * *

"What's the sitch, Director?" Ty asked.

"SLIME EVERYWHERE!" the Director yelped from the other end of the grossometer.

"Calm down. How did that start?"

"I first got a notice that slime molds were coming into the streets. Now they're coming into my office!" A slime mold crawled onto his head. The Director cringed as the transmission ended.

"You were right," Ty said. "We _do_ gotta do the thing."

"What thing?"

Ty grew an extra right arm and double-facepalmed.

"Oh, that thing. Sorry."

Ty reabsorbed his extra arm, and they raced off to suit up.

Little did they know that someone was watching...


	4. Slippery Slope

Do you want to know how many slime molds there were in Clarksburg's streets?

They made the streets so slimy they put Frakenbooger to shame.

That's how many slime molds there were.

"I can't spit without hitting one of these things," Ty said. He spat, hitting one of the large, white, gelatinous cells with it. "Literally."

"The first one showed up around midnight last night," The Detective explained. "At first, we thought it was just a one-time occurrence, just a stray mold that went too far. Then the second one came, and the third, and so on."

"Could it be that Slim guy I heard about?" Jetpack asked.

"Nope. He checked himself into the local asylum a while back because he couldn't stop seeing slime molds everywhere."

"That's a shame," Ty said. "He was a nice guy."

"Yeah, well, I guess that's what you get when you get possessed."

"Which brings us to an important question," Jetpack said. "Is Chester insane?"

"No," Ty said. "Chester's completely fine. It was Kid Rot who was the nutty one."

"Hm."

Ty whipped out his grabber-claw-thingy ( **AN: I don't know what it's called, bear with me** ) and scraped up one of the slime molds.

* * *

"I've identified the slime molds as belonging to the species _Brefeldia maxima_ , the tapioca slime mold. It's common throughout Europe," Lab Rat said.

"So what?" Ty asked. "We know the species, and we know it speaks French. Big deal."

"It is, actually. Tapioca slime molds are very rare in North America."

"Oh..."

"Somebody is breeding them," Lab Rat concluded.

"Thank you, Captain Obvious," Kid Rot said from his jar.

"What do _you_ know besides rotting organic matter and violating my sister's personal space?" Ty snapped.

"Slime mold DNA from that particular species makes up part of my _genome_ ," Kid Rot said flatly. "For me, they're family."

He looked at the slime mold sample. "Let's see...odd. This looks like more than one cell. Slime molds normally just keep dividing only their nuclei, and the cells themselves just keep on growing. But these...oh boy, if they're about to make spores..."

Lab Rat's computer beeped. The scientist turned around and saw what had just popped up on the monitor. "Uh...guys? Did any of you inject hormones into the slime molds when I wasn't looking?"

"Nope," Ty said.

"What's a hormone?" Jetpack asked.

"Good to know, and I'll explain later. The new analysis that just happened says that there are hormones slime molds use to coordinate cell movement - more so than there should be. Someone's not just breeding them..."

"...they're controlling them," Ty finished.

Once again, they were unaware that they were being watched...


	5. Conspiracy?

"See?" Chester said to Abby as they walked out of class together. "You're going to be okay."

Abby smiled. "Thank you, Chester. That means a lot to me."

There was sniggering from some passers-by when they saw Abby, "the failure of a dancer".

"Don't listen to them," Chester said.

"Believe you me, I won't be. Now," she continued, "what was it Lab Rat said about slime molds?"

* * *

"So...how exactly did your film teacher buy your alibi?" Naomi asked her boyfriend.

"I knew he wanted me to film something. So I just filmed a squirrel freaking out over a packing peanut. No biggie," Ty replied.

All of the Grossologists had been called into the lab. The Director had insisted it.

"You'd better find a way to get rid of these DISGUSTING slime molds!" he pleaded. Currently, he was trying to get a slime mold off his desk by...poking it with a pencil.

"Relax, sir. I've contacted our suppliers, they're sending over some local beetle species to eat the molds away," Lab Rat said calmly.

"But what about the beetles?!"

"Once they're done, they'll go back to doing beetle things."

"Like driving?"

Everyone looked at Jetpack as the transmission ended.

"Jetpack, you moron," Abby groaned, "we're talking about the insects, not the model of car named after them."

"Wait - they named a car after a bug? I was just thinking that beetles like to drive places."

"Beetles don't have tiny little cars!" Abby sighed. "Look, we've got important stuff to do right now!"

Hermes chirped.

"And the rat has something important to say," Paige commented.

All eyes focused on a tiny, beetle-shaped robot that no one had noticed before. It was spraying a mist that the slime mold sample was gravitating to.

"You were right," Naomi said. "Someone's controlling them. That tiny little robot's spraying the exact same hormones the slime molds use to focus their movement. But if it's not Slim...then who?"

"I have a stupid idea," Ty said. "The video of Abby...I was thinking about it, and I realized that we've only checked for people in visible and ultraviolet wavelengths. But not infrared. Lab Rat, think you can do one right now?"

"Certainly."

He brought up the video. Abby cringed when she saw it, as Lab Rat placed an infrared filter over it. Sure enough, an infrared signature matching up with the shape of the beetle showed up in the mirror.

Ty looked at the robot, noticing the cameras it had in place for eyes.

"Someone doesn't like us, especially my sister," Ty said. "I don't know who yet, but they're planning something very evil."

Abby's eyes shifted towards Paige.

"It wasn't me," the blond girl said. "One, I've changed. Two, I don't even know what a slime mold is."

Silence.

"Well, that's concerning," Lab Rat said.

Paige gave him a look.


	6. Guess who's back?

"This the right place?" Abby asked.

"No duh. We know where the school is," Ty replied.

"I was asking if this was the right _hallway_."

"Oh. Yes, it is." Ty proved this by lifting his hands to reveal a white, gelatinous blob trying to crawl up his wrist.

"You guys stay here," Abby said to the rest of the team. "If we need you, we'll let you know."

"Got it," Paige said.

* * *

It was eerily quiet in the hallways. Most of the slime molds had vanished. The original two Archer siblings padded down its length, waiting for something to happen.

"If any after-school clubs come, we're screwed," Ty said.

" _You_ can turn invisible. I will be the only one screwed."

"My thing won't!" Ty exclaimed, lifting his goopshooter.

"Keep it down, dummy. If someone finds us-"

"Too late," came a new voice. " _Waaaay_ too late."

The Archers gasped. They turned around to see a familiar person. A boy, with an unruly mop of red hair, freckles, and a characteristic gap in his teeth. Unlike before, however, both eyes were completely healthy.

"Roger Pinkeye," Ty said. "We meet again. And I see you are now inappropriately named."

"Yes, my parents finally took me to a dermatologist to get that fixed," Roger replied.

"What do you want, Roger?" Abby said, a bit cross.

"Revenge," Roger said, grinning evilly. "You never let me have my dream of being a Grossologist. Now I'm going to keep you from having yours. I'm going to reveal your secret identities to the world, an action that will shut down the bureau _permanently_."

Both of the siblings were shocked. Frightened, even. But Abby got over that and said, "Roger, it was your own stupid fault you got kicked off! I mean, trusting _Lance Boil_?! Making an _evil clone of me_?! And you blame US?! What the [f word]?!"

"No, I know all of that. I resent you thwarting my plan to join you. So if I can't be a Grossologist, nobody can."

"How?" Ty spoke. "Everyone's going to think you're just a crazy conspiracy theorist, like those Nibiru weirdos. You have no evidence."

"Oh, I have it all right."

A small, beetle-shaped robot jumped to his shoulder.

"I've been taking video footage of you all day. The slime molds? A simple plan to get footage of you doing what you do."

"See? I should've given the squirrel something to freak out about!" Ty exclaimed. Abby slapped him. "Right. Focus."

Roger pulled out a camera. "With this, I'll be able to expose you, to finally prove I'm right."

"Wait...did you...?" Abby began to ask.

"The video of you was just a test for my beetle-bots. I never thought it would go viral, but hey - revenge is revenge."

And with that, he raced off.

"I'm going to kill him," Abby snarled.

There was a scream.

"Looks like our friends and brother are doing it for us," Ty commented.

* * *

"SINCE WHEN WAS PAIGE A GROSSOLOGIST?!" Roger yelped, racing down a different hallway.

"Last May, nerdtron! And boy, is it good!" the blond hissed, chasing after him.

Roger turned forwards, but was stopped by Ty morphing into a lion. Lion-Ty roared and swatted Roger with a massive paw. Roger jumped out of the way, and Ty ended up swatting Paige by mistake, knocking her to the ground.

"Sorry," Ty said timidly as Paige glared at him.

There was a flapping of wings, and Roger found Jetpack trying to snatch him up with his feet from the air. Roger smiled, then raced downstairs. Jetpack collided with the entrance to the stairwell, then fell face-first onto the floor.

"I can't see," Jetpack said from the floor. "Is the Linoleum Monster going to get me now?"

"Uh...no?" Chester said, not sure of what to say.

* * *

Roger was now in the hallway of the basement. Naomi and Abby were pursuing him. Suddenly, Naomi stopped and took out her phone.

"What are you doing?" Abby asked.

"Don't look now, but Roger's going to get the slip," the ginger replied.

She took video as Roger raced off...then slipped on a banana peel and slid all the way through the doors into the pool.

Splashing was heard, followed by "My camera!"

Naomi finished the video. "Told you."

* * *

 **The next day... (September 3, 2014)**

"I can't find that video of anywhere," Chester said.

"Of course not. Lab Rat hacked YouTube and removed it," Ty replied. "Also, he made it so it could never be accessed again, completely deleted from search history."

"That is scary."

"You'll get used to it."

"I'm just glad Abby's back to being her old self."

"Me too. Hey, did you check Naomi's account? She uploaded a video last night."

"Sure thing, Ty."

Ty morphed into a laptop. Chester sat down and put Ty on his lap. Ty went to YouTube, found his girlfriend's account, and found the newest addition to her channel:

 **Banana peel FAIL**

They watched the footage Naomi had taken yesterday of Roger messing up.

"Now _that_ is funny," Chester said.


	7. Credits Gag

"Feel better?" Paige asked Abby.

"Much. Kinda karmic that Naomi posted a video of _Roger_ messing up, don't you think?" Abby replied.

"Yeah. But something's been bugging me - how did the banana peel get there?"

"People don't pick up after themselves! Duh!"

"Oh...no wonder it was such a convenient plot point..."

The end.


End file.
